Kristoffer Helle - Roxette - Listen to Your Heart - Bass

I got the idea to do this song when I was buying gelato at Hello Gelato on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. This song started to play from the speakers and when I came to the cashier I told her that this band was from Sweden and so was I. She didn’t know Roxette and I don’t think she knew what Sweden was either. In her defense I think she was very young. I remember as a kid how big of a deal it was in Sweden when Roxette reached No 1 in the US. I bet that it was at least 15-20 years after that the gelato girl in Pasadena was born. But there’s another story to this too. Both of the members of Roxette had been in bands and been solo artists in Sweden with a lot of success before they joined forces as Roxette and their goal was to make in internationally and especially in the US. Their first album became a hit in Scandinavia but they saw it as a failure. They wanted, just as ABBA and Europe before them get successful outside Scandinavia. When it came to their second album Look Sharp they changed the way they worked in the studio and brought in more keyboards and sequencers and less of a band. The album became a instant success in Scandinavia but got next to none attention elsewhere. Their label in the US didn’t see any potential in them and refused to release the album. That was about to change. In my hometown, Borås, Sweden an exchange student by the name of Dean Cushman bought the album and really liked it. He probably bought it in one of those record stores that a young me was visiting all the time! When his semester abroad was over he took the CD with him back to Minnesota. Think this was in 1988 so he was an early CD user. Dean Cushman took the CD to his local radio station and wanted them to play it on the air. When that did not happen he went back and wanted his CD back. When he was waiting the program director thought that he should at least listen to it, so he did and really liked it. Here’s an article about it: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dean-c...